Italy’s new Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has signed off on a directive ordering two NGO-run search-and-rescue ships to stay out of Italian waters after they picked up a combined total of 326 people in the southern Mediterranean.
The interior ministry said that the conduct of the two ships, the Ocean Viking and Humanity 1, was “not in line with the spirit of European and Italian regulations on security and border control and the fight against illegal immigration.”
The move was agreed upon with Deputy Premier and Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility Minister Matteo Salvini, whose brief gives him authority over Italy's ports.
It appears to mark a return of the policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run migrant rescue ships that Salvini, adopted when he was interior minister between 2018 and 2019 in the first government of ex-premier Giuseppe Conte.
